tiananmen square protests were originally protesting that very transition toward a more capitalist-like system in china and growing anxiety toward it and the communist party’s apparent inability to handle it well; hence the push for democracy (not necessarily the liberal western democracy most would imagine)

[1]http://www.tsquare.tv/links/Walder.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests

in both cases maybe you could say students were protesting what they saw as corruption and a corrupt system and to save what they felt was the ideal that they grew up with (democratic socialism in china, liberal democracy in hongkong)?

[edit] formatting links